


You Like Me

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Mutual Respect and Admiration, Pre-Canon, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Relationship, Speaking Without Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 04:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13605591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: Shiro isn't saying the words, but Keith hears them anyhow.





	You Like Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eehn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eehn/gifts).



There's a loose board on one of the porch steps. Not loose enough yet to be a hazard, just loose enough to squeak if you happen to step on it with the right angle and pressure. Keith has spent enough time exploring this shack to be familiar with every sound it can make and what it takes to make the shack give up each sound, and when he hears the distinct squeak of that porch step, he doesn't reach for a weapon or try to hide. Because there's only one other person who knows how to step on that board to make it squeak like that—

"Shiro," Keith says as the door opens, before Shiro can say anything. He knows Shiro is going to say his name, and Keith just—he knows he deserves all the remonstration and everything else that will be in Shiro's voice, and he can take it, but not as the first thing Shiro says. Keith just wants a simple greeting, like the one he's given now:

"Hey, kid." 

Keith kind of hates the way Shiro calls him "kid." He's not a kid anymore, he's sixteen. "I could call you 'cadet'," Shiro had offered once, and sometimes he does call Keith that, especially when their paths cross on Garrison grounds. When they're not on Garrison grounds, like now, Shiro usually calls him by his given name. But every once in a while, he uses "kid" instead and Keith hates it—but he doesn't hate the way Shiro inflects it, like it's more a name than a label. He doesn't hate the way Shiro's breath flows around the word, before and after it, softening and shaping it.

Shiro starts over and Keith looks away before trying to read his face, pretty sure he hasn't glanced away fast enough to stop Shiro from reading his or at least getting a good look at it, good enough to see more than the criss-crossed bandages. The other chair thuds lightly as Shiro sets it down, closer to Keith. The creak it makes as Shiro sits in it doesn't hold any meaning: all the meaning is going to come in Shiro's words, which Keith doesn't want but knows he deserves. He starts to glance out the window, but his gaze is drawn back to his hands as Shiro's come into view, reaching for one. 

"Here." The damp cloth Keith has been using to clean up the blood slides through his fingers. It doesn't hurt but he can't help or hide a wince. "Hey," Shiro says again, the edge to the softness making Keith look up. He holds the gaze as Shiro looks him over critically. The remonstrations will come now, and Keith swallows down everything he would have said to Garrison instructors; he chases the swallowed words with a deep breath, preparing to take everything Shiro is going to say next.

"So," Shiro starts, a conversationality to that one small word already inviting Keith in, instead of pushing him down, "what were you working on?" He glances out the window and Keith follows his gaze to the overly-chaotic wreckage, curls of smoke still drifting up in spots. 

_Working on._ Not an accusatory "What were you doing" but an actually interested "What were you working on," like Shiro knows just from looking at the debris he probably came through on his way to the shack that Keith had a plan, that he wasn't just blowing stuff up out of boredom. There have been times that Keith wished Shiro was a little older, that he was a full Garrison instructor and not just a genius senior cadet helping out his juniors. Lately though, all he wishes is that Shiro wasn't so far ahead of him, that they could even be in the same class year... 

"Tactical explosions." Keith clears his throat, only to find he doesn't have any more to say.

Shiro nods. "It's dangerous to underestimate the importance of strategy." He's said that before, just as he's said that Keith has such potential—but those aren't the words coming next, Keith knows as Shiro sighs. "I just wish you were more careful." 

He's said that before, too. There's something unspoken at the end of it and Keith hears the _with yourself_ —Shiro actually said it, once, just once, but Keith hasn't forgotten what the breath around those words sounds like. 

Those words aren't going to come this time. Keith's brow furrows as he tries not to listen to the silence. Most of the time silence doesn't bother him at all, and he usually finds meaningful silence preferable to meaningless words, but sometimes it gets under his skin like this time. He catches and halts his squirm, but not the words that pour out of his mouth: "I have to keep pushing it, though, if I want to get good at it." He does manage to cut himself off before he adds, _better than they teach us to be at the Garrison_. 

Which is definitely how Keith sees it, but Shiro is one of the Garrison's true believers. Keith doesn't want to put him in a position of having to choose one over the other, him or the Garrison... He's worried he might have done it this time even without saying anything aloud. His jaw slides off-center, and finds words: "One of those 'daredevil explosions'"—there had been a glimmer in Shiro's eyes the first time he'd seen one of Keith's experiments and called it that, so Keith thinks he might be able to get away with saying Shiro's description back to him now—"might save your life someday."

Shiro grins at him, bends his head to resume cleaning Keith's wounds, swabbing away with touches so delicate, it's almost difficult to believe those same hands pack the wallop they do in combat. Mock combat; Keith doesn't think anyone has been on the receiving end of Shiro going all out for real, doesn't think anyone would stand a chance. They don't really stand a chance as it is, when he's pulling his punches in training sessions. Trading the bloodied cloth for a package of treated gauze, Shiro starts to unwind it from the roll even as he wraps it carefully around Keith's hand. "Why do you think I keep you around?"

Keith looks at Shiro's hands, looks at Shiro's mouth, traces of his grin softened and lingering. _Because you like me._ He feels a smile of his own coming on but he tucks it back, so far back it tickles his throat and he swallows it, feels his smile mutate into words inside him. _You like me, you like me, you like me._

"There." Shiro smoothes the edges of the fabric bandage he's applied over the gauze and sits back. He eyes the bandages on Keith's face more critically now than when he first came in, and Keith lets him. 

"It'll be a problem—" Keith starts, because it's important to him that Shiro knows Keith really does know the Garrison frowns on his extracurricular experiments. Even if they might save someone someday.

"I'll cover for you at curfew," Shiro interrupts, "and for the next few days of classes. You just work on healing up."

Keith doesn't miss the subtle inflection on _work_ , the way it echoes how Shiro termed today's explosion. He gets it; he nods. The sun has started to set without him noticing the fading of the light outside. The smoke wisps, if they're still curling up, are no longer visible. He wonders who else, if anyone, saw them from the Garrison. How much Shiro will be risking by covering for him. He should have said thank you right away, but the words have only come to him now and they don't have enough weight in his mouth, so he lets them go with a breath.

"I don't have to be back for a couple of hours," Shiro says. He's looking out at the dusk too but not at invisible smoke curls, his face tipped up above the horizon line. He transforms when he's looking at the stars. Keith isn't sure if Shiro is aware of how he looks when he's looking at the stars. He doesn't think so; that kind of beauty is unconscious.

Then Keith hears it: _a couple of hours_. Just enough time for— _"The Martian_ , then?" He doesn't need an answer to the rhetorical question and goes to get the vidplayer out of his rucksack. Some people have songs they think of as their own. Keith and Shiro have a movie.

There's no proper furniture in the shack, except the table and a couple of old wooden chairs Keith salvaged and Shiro helped him fix up. So they sit on the floor, backs against the wall, knees occasionally touching, watching Mark Watney find a way to survive with brilliance and fortitude, with self-reliant ingenuity (and yeah, as Shiro always points out, with teamwork too); to do more than survive, so much more. Keith never gets tired of this movie, but after the third or fourth time Shiro had uncomplainingly watched it with him, Keith had suggested they watch something else. "No, I like this one. It gives me," Shiro had said, and seemed to stop mid-sentence. Keith had looked away, thinking Shiro was done, and to this day isn't sure he was meant to hear Shiro add, softly, "I think that might be you someday."

Keith got addicted to _The Martian_ imagining Shiro as the protagonist, defying odds on a planetary mission somewhere. There are rumors the Garrison will be launching an expedition to one of Pluto's moons and even though the crew hasn't been announced yet, Keith doesn't see how they could pass over Shiro. Anyhow, neither one of them has the scientific knowledgebase to pull off what Mark Watney did (and Keith hopes Shiro will never actually be in such a survival position), but that doesn't really matter. This is their movie.

With Watney safely back on Earth, Keith turns off the vidplayer. Light from the moon, a phase shy of full, is making patterns on the floor as it pours softly in through the window. 

"Do you want me to stay?" 

Keith fights the urge to put his face in his hands, doesn't trust himself to say anything and only shakes his head.

Shiro looks at him, though, until Keith says, "I'll be okay. I got knocked down but not out." 

"Okay." With a nod, Shiro gets to his feet and Keith just, he just really doesn't have words for what it means to him that Shiro trusts him when he says he's okay. He honestly is: there's no chance of concussion, the cuts, though numerous, aren't deep, and the anesthetic agent on the gauze is easing most of his discomfort.

It would be weird to walk Shiro out, so Keith remains sitting. "Okay," he says when Shiro says he'll come by the next day with more provisions. 

For a moment, Shiro is silhouetted in the doorway, the stars blacked out in his shape. Then the door shuts and he's gone.

That board on the porch step whines softly and precisely, the touch of Shiro's foot on the wood as delicate as the touch of his hands on skin. Keith rests his fingertips on the back of his bandaged hand and listens to Shiro's step say without words, _I like you, I like you, I like you._

**Author's Note:**

> _The Martian_ is an amazing novel and movie about the triumph of science and the resiliency of the human spirit. I cannot recommend it highly enough. [Here are some actual summaries](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/plotsummary), for anyone interested!


End file.
